Wednesday, January 19, 2005
This kind of hurt
From: Cara
Date: Jan 19, 2005 09:15 PM
Subject: we were merely freshmen
Body: Your freshmen year of high school
[What year was it?]
1994-95
[What were your three favorite bands?]
Letters to Cleo, Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette
[What was your favorite outfit?]
probably this tight striped shirt that made my boobs look big and some jeans. (hey, I didn't actually get any until I was like 20, so I took what I could get). And I also admit I loved wearing my coverups for the dance team. I was on the Golden Brigade, and we had these black jazz-type windpants and a matching jacket with some team logo of a girl dancing on the back. The design was gold, and each item had my name embroidered in gold on the top left corner. I am a tool.
[What was up with your hair?]
really, really long. It was long and wavy, down to my ass, but then I cut it halfway through the year. I didn't know how long it would take to grow back, because it had been long my entire life. It's never been as long since. I honestly, painfully admit that I think I cut it because I felt different with it. From other people. I got a shoulder-length bob in January, cut like a foot off of it at least.
[Who were your best friends?]
That's hard. I guess these girls who were in my classes and on the team with me. Rachel, Jamie, and Rachel's twin sister Krissy, but I never felt like I identified with them. And probably my sisters at home. And also a girl named Quindy.
[What did you do after school?]
I went to dance practice, and then I would usually walk two miles home after. I worked really hard on the team.
[Where did you work?]
I didn't work yet. That came later.
[Did you take the bus?]
Every morning to school.
[Who did you have a crush on?]
I was kind of boy crazy. I guess the biggest one was Aaron Riley. We went out for like two weeks, but he was my first kiss. Broke my heart. (shut up Mer, hah! But it really is quite hilarious in retrospect.)
[Did you fight with your parents?]
no.
[Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on?]
God, it's really hard to remember this stuff. I'm fuckin' old. I honestly don't know. Probably Eddie Furlong still. I remember really liking him in middle school anyway. ninth is a blur for some reason.
[Did you smoke cigarettes?]
No.
[Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack all day because you were too nervous to find your locker?]
no.
[Did you have a 'clique'?]
I guess it was a group of girls from the team like I said. But it was so weird. I totally had an inferiority complex. I just watched them really, like I was on the outside.
[Did you have "The Max" like Zach Kelly and Slater?]
mmm, no. We used to go to Chili's after basketball games. That was the thing to do.
[Admit it, were you popular?]
By association. For awhile my friends were the popular people, but I wasn't feeling it. I quit the team at the end of the year, and the rest of my high school life was incredibly different. After that I got to know a lot more people. Just through other activities I did. Plus, I was a nice girl. I was nice to everyone.
[Who did you want to be just like?]
Freshman year, I wanted to be like Rachel. I thought she was so beautiful. And her make-up was perfect every day. And she had the nicest things. And boys really liked her, but she paid no attention. And all the girls wanted to be her friend. And she had great posture. She actually helped mine. She used to bitch me out for dragging my feet when we walked down the halls. I bought the cheap version of the shoes she had. And she gave me a bunch of old clothes that didn't fit her anymore.
[What did you want to be when you grew up?]
An actress. And singer. I wanted to be the leading lady in musical theater productions. For a long time.
[Where did you think you'd be at the age you are now?]
I think I thought New York, probably. I used to daydream about going to Juilliard.
***
I posted that on a MySpace bulletin. The questions were from a bulletin I received. And it really hurt to think about that stuff. Quite personal to be posting, too.
I was listening to Alanis Morissette for Christ's sake. But that's just the surface of the pain and embarrassment lingering from high school.
Seriously, just filling that out brought back some familiar chest pains.
And I kept wanting to go, "But now I ... blah blah blah ..." Or "but the next year blah blah blah ..." Or, "in college, blah blah blah."
But the truth is, if another one of those questionaires were to come out, and it were to ask about say 2000, or 1998, it would be just another mixture of the feelings that come along when one reflects on his or her path of existence: longing, regret, sadness, fondness, tenderness, empathy for the self.
I don't know. And I wonder if that's what we see, when we look in the mirror every day. Maybe sometimes, you can be subconsciously reminded of some passing flame or time, or feeling, while brushing your teeth in the wee hours before you go to work. And maybe that feeling stays with you all day, and that's where bad days come from.
We never really know our futures, what's going to come, what's going to pass, what's going to enter into our lives, whether things that do enter will stay, whether things that leave will ever come back.
And we're drawing these lines. These imaginary timelines that only we can see, unless we map them out for others who may be interested, or for our own sanity and creative self-preservations, such as journals and blogs and art.
And we're drawing them abstractly, yet hoping they will lead to a place, such as a place with an answer to our questions, whether they lie in death or do not. Or if they can be found further down the imaginary lines.
I don't know what many of my beliefs are. I admire people with strong opinions, when i don't want to hit them. I don't know if I want to get married, or if I want children, or if there is a god, or if there is heaven, or what age I will be when I die, or if my neighborhood streets would be safe in ten years, or what color the moon would be to me if I were standing right on it.
I don't know if I believe in soul mates. Nor do I have any definitive answers to the perils of the universe.
But I love not knowing. And I love waking up every day. And I love remembering, even when it hurts. I love that once you've known someone, or even loved them, that they could be gone, in some form or fashion, in a swift exit or a drawn-out, dismal one, and that you can look back and remember lying in bed with them, and eating oatmeal for breakfast some morning while you listened to a Bing Crosby record.
I love all the questions. I love all the details. And I love how the littlest things, such as writing this, can make the weighty chest pains of those memories resurrected from the attic of my brain to cast down on the depths of my being in cold spheres smolder over into a smile in my belly, like this one time when a boy I admitted having a crush on smiled back at me in mutual delight and described the all-consuming, sudden relieving happiness he felt inside him that very moment, and how he motioned for the smile with his own hands across his abdomen. I loved that.
From: Cara
Date: Jan 19, 2005 09:15 PM
Subject: we were merely freshmen
Body: Your freshmen year of high school
[What year was it?]
1994-95
[What were your three favorite bands?]
Letters to Cleo, Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette
[What was your favorite outfit?]
probably this tight striped shirt that made my boobs look big and some jeans. (hey, I didn't actually get any until I was like 20, so I took what I could get). And I also admit I loved wearing my coverups for the dance team. I was on the Golden Brigade, and we had these black jazz-type windpants and a matching jacket with some team logo of a girl dancing on the back. The design was gold, and each item had my name embroidered in gold on the top left corner. I am a tool.
[What was up with your hair?]
really, really long. It was long and wavy, down to my ass, but then I cut it halfway through the year. I didn't know how long it would take to grow back, because it had been long my entire life. It's never been as long since. I honestly, painfully admit that I think I cut it because I felt different with it. From other people. I got a shoulder-length bob in January, cut like a foot off of it at least.
[Who were your best friends?]
That's hard. I guess these girls who were in my classes and on the team with me. Rachel, Jamie, and Rachel's twin sister Krissy, but I never felt like I identified with them. And probably my sisters at home. And also a girl named Quindy.
[What did you do after school?]
I went to dance practice, and then I would usually walk two miles home after. I worked really hard on the team.
[Where did you work?]
I didn't work yet. That came later.
[Did you take the bus?]
Every morning to school.
[Who did you have a crush on?]
I was kind of boy crazy. I guess the biggest one was Aaron Riley. We went out for like two weeks, but he was my first kiss. Broke my heart. (shut up Mer, hah! But it really is quite hilarious in retrospect.)
[Did you fight with your parents?]
no.
[Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on?]
God, it's really hard to remember this stuff. I'm fuckin' old. I honestly don't know. Probably Eddie Furlong still. I remember really liking him in middle school anyway. ninth is a blur for some reason.
[Did you smoke cigarettes?]
No.
[Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack all day because you were too nervous to find your locker?]
no.
[Did you have a 'clique'?]
I guess it was a group of girls from the team like I said. But it was so weird. I totally had an inferiority complex. I just watched them really, like I was on the outside.
[Did you have "The Max" like Zach Kelly and Slater?]
mmm, no. We used to go to Chili's after basketball games. That was the thing to do.
[Admit it, were you popular?]
By association. For awhile my friends were the popular people, but I wasn't feeling it. I quit the team at the end of the year, and the rest of my high school life was incredibly different. After that I got to know a lot more people. Just through other activities I did. Plus, I was a nice girl. I was nice to everyone.
[Who did you want to be just like?]
Freshman year, I wanted to be like Rachel. I thought she was so beautiful. And her make-up was perfect every day. And she had the nicest things. And boys really liked her, but she paid no attention. And all the girls wanted to be her friend. And she had great posture. She actually helped mine. She used to bitch me out for dragging my feet when we walked down the halls. I bought the cheap version of the shoes she had. And she gave me a bunch of old clothes that didn't fit her anymore.
[What did you want to be when you grew up?]
An actress. And singer. I wanted to be the leading lady in musical theater productions. For a long time.
[Where did you think you'd be at the age you are now?]
I think I thought New York, probably. I used to daydream about going to Juilliard.
***
I posted that on a MySpace bulletin. The questions were from a bulletin I received. And it really hurt to think about that stuff. Quite personal to be posting, too.
I was listening to Alanis Morissette for Christ's sake. But that's just the surface of the pain and embarrassment lingering from high school.
Seriously, just filling that out brought back some familiar chest pains.
And I kept wanting to go, "But now I ... blah blah blah ..." Or "but the next year blah blah blah ..." Or, "in college, blah blah blah."
But the truth is, if another one of those questionaires were to come out, and it were to ask about say 2000, or 1998, it would be just another mixture of the feelings that come along when one reflects on his or her path of existence: longing, regret, sadness, fondness, tenderness, empathy for the self.
I don't know. And I wonder if that's what we see, when we look in the mirror every day. Maybe sometimes, you can be subconsciously reminded of some passing flame or time, or feeling, while brushing your teeth in the wee hours before you go to work. And maybe that feeling stays with you all day, and that's where bad days come from.
We never really know our futures, what's going to come, what's going to pass, what's going to enter into our lives, whether things that do enter will stay, whether things that leave will ever come back.
And we're drawing these lines. These imaginary timelines that only we can see, unless we map them out for others who may be interested, or for our own sanity and creative self-preservations, such as journals and blogs and art.
And we're drawing them abstractly, yet hoping they will lead to a place, such as a place with an answer to our questions, whether they lie in death or do not. Or if they can be found further down the imaginary lines.
I don't know what many of my beliefs are. I admire people with strong opinions, when i don't want to hit them. I don't know if I want to get married, or if I want children, or if there is a god, or if there is heaven, or what age I will be when I die, or if my neighborhood streets would be safe in ten years, or what color the moon would be to me if I were standing right on it.
I don't know if I believe in soul mates. Nor do I have any definitive answers to the perils of the universe.
But I love not knowing. And I love waking up every day. And I love remembering, even when it hurts. I love that once you've known someone, or even loved them, that they could be gone, in some form or fashion, in a swift exit or a drawn-out, dismal one, and that you can look back and remember lying in bed with them, and eating oatmeal for breakfast some morning while you listened to a Bing Crosby record.
I love all the questions. I love all the details. And I love how the littlest things, such as writing this, can make the weighty chest pains of those memories resurrected from the attic of my brain to cast down on the depths of my being in cold spheres smolder over into a smile in my belly, like this one time when a boy I admitted having a crush on smiled back at me in mutual delight and described the all-consuming, sudden relieving happiness he felt inside him that very moment, and how he motioned for the smile with his own hands across his abdomen. I loved that.
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